The Perfect School Voucher Plan

[Meadmaker]

Periodically, I start a thread on school vouchers, and I’m inclined to do so now.

School vouchers are one of the areas I part ways with the Democratic party, with whom I usually vote. I am a huge supporter of any form of school choice, and I haven’t seen any reason that the choice shouldn’t involve vouchers.

My primary motivation for vouchers is not to improve the quality of schools. Studies have found no conclusive evidence that private schools are better than public schools, or that voucher schools are better than traditional schools. My primary motivation for vouchers is to eliminate urban blight. I live near Detroit. I used to live in a predominantly African-American, lower middle class suburb. Then I had a child, and moved.

That pattern repeats itself over and over in Detroit and the poorer suburbs. People live there until their kids turn five years old, and then if they can afford to move, they move. Call me an elitist if you wish, but I think the “best” people for quality of life in an area are families with children who care about the quality of their kids’ education. If they live in Detroit, those people move unless they are just too poor to get the heck out. The result is urban blight that can never be fixed.

I want to give those people options.

Also, while there is no conclusive evidence that private schools do better than public schools, there is evidence that both private and public schools get better following the introduction of school choice. I can look up links to those studies if anyone is interested.

And so, I wish to reveal the Perfect School Voucher Program, a finely tuned educational model that would solve all the nation’s problems. After you’ve read it, please contact your legislators and tell them how to get hold of me. They’ll want this information, for sure.

1. School vouchers are available for parents to pay all or part of the tuition at a private school.
2. Local elected school boards determine how many, and what value, the vouchers are for. Parents make up the difference at the school.
3. Schools accepting vouchers must teach a core curriculum, be tested on that curriculum, and can be shut down if they don’t satisfy that curriculum. What else they teach in their spare time is up to them.
4. No school accepting vouchers may practice the usual range of discrimination, against race, creed, etc. This applies to students, and to any teacher teaching any subject used to fulfill the educational requirements in 5. (They can still use nuns to teach religion class, but they have to hire any takers for math class. If they call Hebrew class “foreign language”, they have to allow qualified goys to teach it.)
6. Voucher accepting schools must accept voucher students on a lottery basis. They can’t pick “the cream of the crop” only.



From discussions in the past, I’ve identified some legitimate, and not so legitimate, concerns about school voucher programs. The most legitimate concern is infrastructure costs. When you remove a child from public schools, you don’t lower the heating bill. That’s the reason for item 2 above. School boards can determine whether or not they would go broke due to the upkeep cost on half-filled schools if the students left. If they couldn’t afford that, no vouchers. On the other hand, if they are faced with a crumbling school and no chance of a bond initiative passing to build a new one, vouchers might be a positive alternative. Of course, if the schools in the district are horrible, and the board says no vouchers, there will probably be a new board come next November, but that’s life in electoral politics for you.

A not so legitimate concern is that voucher schools would teach religion. Yeah, they would. Of course, some of you would find that so horribly awful that you just couldn’t tolerate it. Ok. Vote against it. Meanwhile, the core curriculum requirement would mean that they would have to teach the basics. I, for one, don’t care if they teach the Flying Spaghetti Monster religion, as long as the kids can do math. In High School, if the kid can pass the test that says the Earth is 5 billion years old, I don’t really care if he actually thinks it’s only 6,000 years old. You may have different priorities. That’s what elections are for.

Another not so legitimate concern is that rich kids can go to good schools while poor kids won’t be able to go to good schools. That’s not a legitimate concern, because that’s the way it is now. Poor folks can’t live in the posh suburbs that have the good schools. Our public school system, far from ensuring an egalitarian system, enshrines economic, and therefore racial, segregation.

An interesting side note on that issue is that analysis of voting patterns in voucher initiatives reveals an interesting demographic trend. Childless homeowners in rich areas hate vouchers. Childless homeowners in poor areas love vouchers. Why would that be? Surely the principled opposition to vouchers isn’t correlated with a financial interest, is it?

A legitimate concern is that transportation costs and difficulties would increase. I don’t know what to do about that, but I’ve decided the benefits outweigh the costs.

A not so legitimate concern is that private schools aren’t sufficiently regulated. More accurately, that’s a legitimate concern, but it should be eliminated by number 3 above. I want regulation of schools that accept vouchers.

In the interests of full disclosure, my kid currently attends a private school. However, it wouldn’t be eligible for vouchers under the Perfect School Voucher Plan, because it discriminates in hiring and admission. Only Jewish children are allowed to attend.

That’s a good start. Comments, please.

 

[Lurker]

LOL! I just moved a few months ago. What precipitated it? Well, I opened the paper at my previous house to see the headline "Worst School District in Town" and it was where I lived. I looked at my 3 year old son and said, "Time to move!". A year later I moved so I will be ready next year to send my kids to the best school district in town. Yeah!

But I am pretty much against vouchers. Here are my reasons:

1. Most kids in those urban schools cannot afford to move to better school districts, like you said. Further, they cannot afford to commute to the better districts either.

2. Most voucher programs allow discrimination on merit. I note your idea disallows that, which is good, but I fear schools would find ways around that.

3. Voucher plans, yours included, would take money out of the public school system without any students changing places. Why? Vouchers would be funded through the system that we fund schools right now, right? So if I have 3 kids and through taxes each provides $3k for the public school system. So right now the public school system receives $9k in revenue. But let's say one attends private school. Before vouchers, the public schools STILL received $9k but under your new voucher plan the public school only gets $6k. So without any change in enrollement, public school budgets are slashed. I don't think that will help, do you?

4. I would rather try and resolve the true problems schools face than institute vouchers which just ignores it. Poor preparation for school, bad environments and so on. Vouchers don't solve those problems, they only allow a few to escape while letting those left behind in a public school to a worse fate as funds get smaller and smaller.

5. I doubt all schools would be equal and not all schools would be covered by the voucher program. You'd still have the best schools exclude poor students by raising tuition beyond their means.

Lurker

 

[Ladewig]

3. Schools accepting vouchers must teach a core curriculum, be tested on that curriculum, and can be shut down if they don’t satisfy that curriculum. What else they teach in their spare time is up to them.

How much do you think this testing will cost? Will it involve the cheaper, but less efficient multiple-choice scanable test, or the more expensive written-answer test.

 

[Mycroft]

As a person who's considered sending my own kid to private schools, I can certainly understand the attraction of a voucher program, but I'm still against it.
When you consider the cost of private schools versus the dollar amounts they're talking about for vouchers, it's not really likely to sway the decision. If you can't afford private schools to begin with, then you're still not going to be able to afford it with a voucher. Poor people will still be trapped in their crappy school districts, only now those schools will be drained of the funds used for the vouchers.

 

[Mycroft]

4. I would rather try and resolve the true problems schools face than institute vouchers which just ignores it. Poor preparation for school, bad environments and so on. Vouchers don't solve those problems, they only allow a few to escape while letting those left behind in a public school to a worse fate as funds get smaller and smaller.

I agree. I'd much rather see a program where problem schools are helped to solve their problems.

 

[DavidJames]

I agree. I'd much rather see a program where problem schools are helped to solve their problems.

Agree - fix the root cause of the problem.

 

[Tmy]

Im a childless taxpayer. SCREW PARENTS AND THEIR RATTY KIDS!!! 1/2 my towns budget already goes to educating your brats. You greedy parents now want be to provided wh free public schools, AND also want to front you cash money just cause you dont like whats free. Well dont look a gift horse in the mouth!!! Your lucky you get all those stinkin tax write offs. You self centered tax dodgers.

 

[Tmy]

If you're really concearned about school chioce, then let the parents choose whichever PUBLIC school they want. Instead of this taxpayer shakedown disguised as vouchers.

 

[Meadmaker]

I agree. I'd much rather see a program where problem schools are helped to solve their problems.

Nobody wants bad schools. Right? Everybody wants good schools, right?

So why don't people just solve the schools' problems?

The problem isn't money. We know that. The problem isn't desire. Everyone has it. We have the motive, the means, and the opportunity to fix the schools, but whatever problems they have, they still have.

If everybody wants to do something, and they have the resources they need to do it, but it isn't getting done, then there is something in the system that is preventing it from getting done. What is it?

 

[Meadmaker]

How much do you think this testing will cost? Will it involve the cheaper, but less efficient multiple-choice scanable test, or the more expensive written-answer test.

Whatever they are doing now, I guess.

 

[Meadmaker]

LOL! I just moved a few months ago. What precipitated it? Well, I opened the paper at my previous house to see the headline "Worst School District in Town" and it was where I lived. I looked at my 3 year old son and said, "Time to move!". A year later I moved so I will be ready next year to send my kids to the best school district in town. Yeah!

I'm willing to bet that your old neighborhood is worse off for your absence. You could have afforded to commute, even if your neighbors couldn't have afforded it. If you had stayed, your old neighborhood would be a better place, even without your kid in the school.

School vouchers wouldn't solve all the problems. There's no panacea. I just think it's a step in the right direction.

2. Most voucher programs allow discrimination on merit. I note your idea disallows that, which is good, but I fear schools would find ways around that.

Sort of, although that hasn't happened in Milwaukee, where vouchers have been around for a long time. What I'm pretty sure would happen is that some schools would set very high standards and instruct teachers to leave behind the slow students who couldn't cut it.

But are high standards really a bad thing? Even if it means that a parent may eventually look at his kid and just have to acknowledge that maybe the Academie pour les Tres Richs et Intelligents isn't the place for him?

One of the things I really like about school choice is it gets rid of "one size fits all" education.

3. But let's say one attends private school. Before vouchers, the public schools STILL received $9k but under your new voucher plan the public school only gets $6k. So without any change in enrollement, public school budgets are slashed. I don't think that will help, do you?

There's a certain truth to that. Right now, privately schooled and homeschooled students don't place a burden on the taxpayer, while with a voucher system, they would. There's no way around it. Taxes go up to pay for students who, right now, are being carried wholly by parents. (Except ones like me, who still wouldn't be eligible.) It was considerations like this that led me to the second plank in the Perfect School Voucher System. Local boards have to have a lot of control over the process.

I'm assuming that a voucher system would work as it does in several cases, already. Everything varies from state to state, but in a typical state, the state provides X dollars. A voucher is Y dollars, with Y<X. The school district gets to keep X-Y dollars when one of their kids take a voucher. In that way, local boards can actually make money by convincing kids to take the voucher. Depending on the existing infrastructures, debt, tax base, income levels, and other local factors, different school boards may choose very different numbers and values of vouchers. I suppose the state would have to have some control, too, to manage the outflow of cash.

5. I doubt all schools would be equal and not all schools would be covered by the voucher program.

They aren't now. Do you think the inequality would get worse?

 

[Meadmaker]

Im a childless taxpayer.

In an affluent suburb. Whose property values would dip.

Hey, I have no problem with someone voting his pocketbook. You get 1 vote, too.

 

[Tricky]

What I see your program doing, Mead, is dumping the problems of public schools on to private schools. One of the main attractions of private schools is that they can screen their students. Take away that ability, and parents of juvenile delinquents will send their children to the private schools as long as they are paid for, thinking/hoping it will make them better.

And you may think the "religion" problem is not a real problem, but it is. A parent might want their kid to go to a good school, but not have them take, say, Catholicism classes. Tough, you say, pick a different school. Nope. If it's the best school in the area and they're all paid by the government, then they can't force a kid to go to a poorer school, and they can't force anyone to take religious instruction in order to go to a better school. That old "separation of church and state" problem again.

And it will never pass because the cost would never fly. It would be a great deal more expensive, and while progressive-minded people like you and I might be willing to pay more taxes, I guarantee you it would be voted out the first time a school bond issue came before the voters. Everybody talks about the need for education, but it seems that few want to pay for it. The whole reason that vouchers are even an issue is because people want to pay less for private schooling by having the government pick up a part of it, but with no increased taxes.

I'll take your word for it that giving choice makes public and private schools better. There's no guarantee that it would still do so once the rules were changed as you propose.

 

[Tmy]

In an affluent suburb. Whose property values would dip.

Hey, I have no problem with someone voting his pocketbook. You get 1 vote, too.

I dont have a problem supporting public schools. I do have a problem with people looking to scam the govt into paying for somthing extra.

Public schools are essentially controlled by the local boards. People are to lazy to fix their own school system, they just want a cash buyout.

Plus who says are schools arent working???? I dont agree with that assumption.

 

[thatguywhojuggles]

I agree that the solution is to fix the schools, and make them better. How do we do this? We do this by paying teachers A LOT MORE than what we pay them now. Why pay teachers more? So that the job market becomes more competitive. When the job market becomes more competitive, the quality of the teachers increases. Simple--pay teachers more and we get better teachers, better teachers equals better schools.

Also, I don't want my tax dollars going to a private religious school.

I remember when my mom was teaching Spanish in K-5. It was amazing to see how quickly they learned Spanish. In just a couple of years, these kids were speaking better Spanish than a Highschool kid with 4 years of Spanish. Then the program was cut. Who made this decision? Someone who was making 200,000 a year. There is plenty of money out there to pay the teachers. It's just that the money is not being spread around evenly.

 

[Meadmaker]

We do this by paying teachers A LOT MORE than what we pay them now.

A lot of people say this, so why doesn't it happen? I'll give credit that it isn't the "spend more money" answer, because the thrust of your message was that pay wasn't being distributed correctly.

If that is what is needed, and it isn't happening now, you have to look at the system that isn't letting it happen. I think it is because of the political control of the schools. In a voucher system, you could put your money where your mouth is. You could send your kid to the school that paid teachers more, and had smaller and/or lower paid administrative staffs.

But let us not get diverted too far. Tmy says the schools aren't so bad, and he's correct. There's a lot of research that suggest that public schools are no worse than private ones, once socioeconomic factors are considered. However, neighborhoods are worse. My primary motive for vouchers is to take a step toward ending urban blight.

Also, I don't want my tax dollars going to a private religious school.

A lot of people feel that way. For my part, I don't think it is important to include parochial schools. I do think the program would be better if religious schools were included, but it isn't something I think is important. I, for one, would gladly give that up in order to pass the program.

 

[Meadmaker]

What I see your program doing, Mead, is dumping the problems of public schools on to private schools.

Indeed it is. I think the private schools can handle them better, largely because they aren't hamstrung by the bureaucrats and regulations.

Tough, you say, pick a different school.

That is what I would say.

Nope. If it's the best school in the area and they're all paid by the government, then they can't force a kid to go to a poorer school, and they can't force anyone to take religious instruction in order to go to a better school.

The current system does exactly that, doesn't it? If the best school is Catholic, the government says we won't pay for it, whether or not you want your kid to take religious instruction. Why is this a step down?

Of course, your tax dollars would go to fund religious instruction, and I understand that a lot of people would be pretty bent out of shape about that. I could go either way about including religious schools in the voucher programs.

For what it's worth, a lot of current religious schools don't like vouchers at all. They understand that there is no way the government would pass a totally hands off voucher program, which would put them in a very difficult position. If they take the money from the government, they take the strings attached. If they don't take the money, they risk losing parents to schools that do take the money.

And it will never pass because the cost would never fly.

In places where it has been done, per pupil spending with vouchers is always less than or equal to the cost without vouchers.

 

[Tricky]

Indeed it is. I think the private schools can handle them better, largely because they aren't hamstrung by the bureaucrats and regulations.

But your plan puts in all sorts of regulations. Can't turn down any students? That's a regulation. Gotta take back students that fail? That's a regulation. You are essentially turning private schools into public schools. I don't see the benefit.

That is what I would say.

I would consider that to be not only unfair, but adverse to the best interests of the students.

The current system does exactly that, doesn't it? If the best school is Catholic, the government says we won't pay for it, whether or not you want your kid to take religious instruction. Why is this a step down?

Because it forces religion on students whose families simply want the best education available.

Of course, your tax dollars would go to fund religious instruction, and I understand that a lot of people would be pretty bent out of shape about that. I could go either way about including religious schools in the voucher programs.

Then again, your plan won't work. Vouchers are wanted by those who wish the government to subsidize their choice of private schools. If you eliminate religious schools from the choices, it will never pass.

For what it's worth, a lot of current religious schools don't like vouchers at all. They understand that there is no way the government would pass a totally hands off voucher program, which would put them in a very difficult position. If they take the money from the government, they take the strings attached. If they don't take the money, they risk losing parents to schools that do take the money.

Another reason why your plan won't work. I'm glad you recognize it.

In places where it has been done, per pupil spending with vouchers is always less than or equal to the cost without vouchers.

I find that totally incredible. I don't think that you are accounting for the fact that public schools must stay open anyway, so you are essentially paying twice for voucher students; once to make sure public school is available and a second time to give them vouchers. And I don't believe, current voucher programs pay for the whole cost of private school. If it doesn't pay for the whole cost, it really isn't an option for solving the urban blight problem.

As much as I share your wish for better education, I don't believe that vouchers are a workable solution unless funding for them increases dramatically.

 

[Art Vandelay]

1. School vouchers are available for parents to pay all or part of the tuition at a private school.
2. Local elected school boards determine how many, and what value, the vouchers are for. Parents make up the difference at the school.
3. Schools accepting vouchers must teach a core curriculum, be tested on that curriculum, and can be shut down if they don’t satisfy that curriculum. What else they teach in their spare time is up to them.
4. No school accepting vouchers may practice the usual range of discrimination, against race, creed, etc. This applies to students, and to any teacher teaching any subject used to fulfill the educational requirements in 5. (They can still use nuns to teach religion class, but they have to hire any takers for math class. If they call Hebrew class “foreign language”, they have to allow qualified goys to teach it.)
6. Voucher accepting schools must accept voucher students on a lottery basis. They can’t pick “the cream of the crop” only.

I'm curious as to what this mysterious Number Five is. Is it a secret?


Tmy: your "points" have already been addressed numerous times before, and I think you're just being a troll.

 

[BobK]

Seems to me, education is a time sensitive service industry. If the consumer isn't satisfied with the service they should be able to reasonably quickly have their concerns handled or be able to start shopping for a better option. Lost time is lost education.

The parents that are forced by economics to send their children to public school, do not at present have the shopping option. They should have.

What incentive, other than loss of the almighty dollar, would cause public schools to maintain a high standard of education? They have an essentially captive market that can't get out of paying for what in some cases is defective schooling.

It's my opinion that an individual is more likely to get value from a service if they can hurt you in a quantifiable way, i.e. financially. Having the possibility of casting a vote every couple years doesn't cut it.

How many of you know of a private school that gives a below average education and stays in business? I'd be surprised to here about one.

That should be the same with public schools, but it won't be until the parents can get some direct control over the purse strings with quick financial feedback for poor performance.

For those private schools that are religious. I don't have a problem with them. Went to one myself K-8, and I'm atheistic. Taking a religion class isn't the end of the world. A least you can get an idea of where other people are coming from. You don't have to believe it. Study hall and Library could be accommodated as ways to avoid the religious class if absolutely necessary.

Would you rather live in a community of at least educated and maybe religious people, or one populated by the ignorant atheistic and ignorant poor religious? I want children at least educated, possibly religious matter little.